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Gradation   Listen
noun
Gradation  n.  
1.
The act of progressing by regular steps or orderly arrangement; the state of being graded or arranged in ranks; as, the gradation of castes.
2.
The act or process of bringing to a certain grade.
3.
Any degree or relative position in an order or series. "The several gradations of the intelligent universe."
4.
(Fine Arts) A gradual passing from one tint to another or from a darker to a lighter shade, as in painting or drawing.
5.
(Mus.) A diatonic ascending or descending succession of chords.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Gradation" Quotes from Famous Books



... the subtlety of this gradation in temptation. The profits of the world and pleasures of sin are held out as allurements. The apostasy of others suggested. The difficulties, dangers, and sufferings of the Lord's people, are contrasted with the prosperity ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... this universal range of possible scientific precision. There is, I allege, a not too clearly recognised order in the sciences which forms the gist of my case against this scientific pretension. There is a gradation in the importance of the individual instance as one passes from mechanics and physics and chemistry through the biological sciences to economics and sociology, a gradation whose correlations and implications have not yet received adequate recognition, and which does profoundly affect the ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... well-paid and often highly-connected Princeps, who, no doubt, discussed the business of the court with the Praetorian Praefect on terms of friendly though respectful familiarity, down to the gaoler and the lictor and the lowest of the half-servile mancipes, there was a regular gradation of rank, which still preserved, in the staff of the highest court of justice in the land, all the traditions of subordination and discipline which had once characterised the military organisation out of ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)

... for those who are unacquainted with the cause of anything extraordinary to be astonished at the effect, and to consider it as a kind of magic. They, who have never observed the gradation by which art is acquired, who see only what is the full result of long labour and application of an infinite number, and infinite variety of acts, are apt to conclude from their entire inability to do the same at once, that it is not only inaccessible to themselves, but can be done by those only ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds

... every gradation of volume in sound, from the faintest to the loudest, enters into the category of Intensity. One of the accepted rules of the arte del bel canto was, that every sustained tone should be coloured by some graduation of intensity. Thus the ability to augment and diminish ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam

... with passion."—Nothing can be less true. Metaphoric strength of expression will burst even from vulgar and illiterate minds when they are agitated. It is a natural effort of roused sensibility in every gradation, from unlettered simplicity to the highest refinement. Passion has no occasion to pause for metaphors, they rush upon the mind which it has heated. Similies, it is true, are not natural to strong emotion. They are the ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward

... was strongly felt in Milan, where he spent so many of the best years of his life and founded a School of painting. He was a close observer of the gradation and reflex of light, and was capable of giving to his discoveries a practical and aesthetic form. His strong personal character and the fascination of his genius enthralled his followers, who were satisfied to repeat his types, to perpetuate the "grey-hound eye," and to make use of his little devices. ...
— Leonardo da Vinci • Maurice W. Brockwell

... breakfast as a philosopher should be, I should be doubtful. As to the conversation at breakfast, I can recall some of it easily, some with an effort, some only with a large element of doubt, and some not at all. Thus there is a continual gradation in the degree of self-evidence of what I remember, and a corresponding gradation in the ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell

... several departments. After the preliminary examination a student who is to take the regular course of study enters the initiatory room. Here he begins with the rudiments of bookkeeping, the study which marks his gradation. The time not given to the practice of writing, and to recitations in other subjects, is devoted to the study of accounts. He is required, first, to write up in "skeleton" form—that is, to place the dates and amounts of ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various

... large. This compensation varied according to the rank of the injured party,—and rank was determined by wealth. The owner of two hydes of land was ranked above a ceorl, or simple farmer, while the owner of twelve hydes was a royal thane. In the compensation for crime the gradation was curious: twelve shillings would pay for the loss of a foot, ten for a great toe, and twenty for a thumb. If a man robbed his equal, he was compelled to pay threefold; if he robbed the king, he paid ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... of the farmhouse have one great and rare merit—they are people whom you can make friends with at once. Between not knowing them at all, and knowing them well enough to shake hands at first sight, there is no ceremonious interval or formal gradation whatever. They received us, on our arrival, exactly as if we were old friends returned from some long traveling expedition. Before we had been ten minutes in the hall, William had the easiest chair and the snuggest corner; the children were eating bread-and-jam ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins

... the causes of these Salses, I fear the reader must be content, for the present, with a somewhat muddy explanation of the muddy mystery. Messrs. Wall and Sawkins are inclined to connect it with asphalt springs and pitch lakes. 'There is,' they say, 'easy gradation from the smaller Salses to the ordinary naphtha or petroleum springs.' It is certain that in the production of asphalt, carbonic acid, carburetted hydrogen, and water are given off. 'May not,' they ask, 'these orifices be the vents by which such ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley

... ingrained of the habits which govern the individual's life—those habits that touch his existence as an organism—are the most persistent and imperative. Beyond these come the higher wants—later-formed habits of the individual or the race—in a somewhat irregular and by no means invariable gradation. Some of these higher wants, as for instance the habitual use of certain stimulants, or the need of salvation (in the eschatological sense), or of good repute, may in some cases take precedence of ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... deepest silence; and on all countenances an expression of reverence and confidence, as towards the just steersman of all our destinies. The King rode quite alone in front, and saluted people, CONTINUALLY taking off his hat. In doing which he observed a very marked gradation, according as the on-lookers bowing to him from the windows seemed to deserve. At one time he lifted the hat a very little; at another he took it from his head, and held it an instant beside the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... Weyden, or by the quaint German "Master of the Lyversberg Passion," who makes us see objects miles away with as great a precision and with as much intensity of local colour as if we were standing off from them a few feet. Were landscape really this, then nothing more inartistic than gradation of tint, atmosphere, and plein air, all of which help to make distant objects less clear, and therefore tend in no way to heighten our sense of capacity. But as a matter of fact the pleasure we take in actual landscape is only to a limited extent an affair of the eye, and ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson

... like the Beauty, while in others it can only be sold at a reduced price. There are few who would care to use either yellow or white fruit for canning or cooking in any way, but many prefer them for slicing, or like to use them with the red for this purpose; we have sorts showing every gradation from white or light yellow in color through shades of red to dark purple-red, and still others which show distinct colors in ...
— Tomato Culture: A Practical Treatise on the Tomato • William Warner Tracy

... Superior directed,—and the Superior, in his turn, was a piece of wax in the hands of the Provincial, and he again in the hands of the General. "There were many gradations in rank, but every rank was a gradation in slavery." The Jesuit is accused of having no individual conscience. He was bound to do what he was told, right or wrong; nothing was right and nothing was wrong except as the Society pronounced. The General stood in the place of God. That man was the happiest who was ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... often possible for governments to venture on an issue of currency, when they could not venture on an additional loan or tax, because the real operation of such issue is not understood by the people, and the pressure of it is irregularly distributed, and with an unperceived gradation. ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... down the vents with a sliding finger, until finally he brought up against a high, shrill note, to which he gave the full force of his lungs, and, after holding it in loud blast for a moment, startled us by breaking off, without gradation, into a silence as sudden as if the music had snapped short off, like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... together in flocks, feed on the dry and sterile ground of the lower districts. The males of all, or certainly of the greater number, are jet black; and the females (with perhaps one or two exceptions) are brown. The most curious fact is the perfect gradation in the size of the beaks in the different species of Geospiza, from one as large as that of a hawfinch to that of a chaffinch, and (if Mr. Gould is right in including his sub-group, Certhidea, in the main group) even to that of a warbler. ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin

... epoch or between different glacial epochs in England, when the Englishman was a savage, using rude stone tools, was then fully ascertained, and, what was more significant, there were clearly shown a gradation and evolution even in the history of that period. It was found that this ancient Stone epoch showed progress and development. In the upper layers of the caves, with remains of the reindeer, who, although he has migrated ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... named Hewitt, said to be the wife of one Captain Hewitt, a leader of the ton, who, after ruining himself and family at the gambling table, ran away from them, and was not since heard of. His wife being left to herself, and having probably been tainted by his evil example, by an easy gradation became first embarrassed, then a prostitute, then a thief, and on the occasion above mentioned exhibited one of the most distressing spectacles of vice and misery that ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... part of their fathers, assigns the dignity of a chief[27] even to very young men. They are admitted to the fellowship of other youths stronger than themselves, and already tried in war, nor do they blush to be seen among the henchmen.[28] There is a gradation in rank among the henchmen, determined by the judgment of him whom they follow, and there is a great emulation among the henchmen, who shall have the highest place under the chief, and among the chiefs who shall have the most numerous and ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... be marched off to the dens of the wild beasts: "Tell them off," said he, "from the bald man to the bald man." Yet these were prisoners committed, not for punishment, but trial. Nor, had it been otherwise, were the charges against them equal, but running through every gradation of guilt. But the elogia or records of their commitment, he would not so much as look at. With such inordinate capacities for cruelty, we cannot wonder that he should in his common conversation have deplored the tameness and insipidity of his own times and ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... Batoum. It is not yet known what may be the ultimate chances of success, but already what is being done there is having the effect of suggesting a similar experiment near Resht. The conditions of the soil on many of the wooded hill-slopes in the Persian Caspian provinces, where every gradation of climate and atmosphere can be met with, appear to be well adapted for the tea-plant. The cart-road to Kasvin, now being constructed by a Russian company, will pass through some of these well-favoured parts, and this will ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon

... cannot be escaped from by the thought that there are species innumerable, passing into each other by regular gradations, out of which we choose what we must love or dread, and say they were indeed prepared for us. Species are not innumerable; neither are they now connected by consistent gradation. They touch at certain points only; and even then are connected, when we examine them deeply, in a kind of reticulated way, not in chains, but in chequers; also, however connected, it is but by a touch of the extremities, as it were, and the characteristic form of the ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... foliage of the oaks, the fields of barley, the waving maize, the thickets of yucca and acacia trees, the palm forest, the shore, the sea itself with its azure waves— all these at a single vision! From the summit of Orizava to the shores of the Mexican Sea, I glance through every gradation of the thermal line. I am looking, as it were, from the pole ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... the curse of service, Preferment goes by letter and affection, And not by old gradation, where each second Stood heir ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... not precisely determined, to a certain extent prevents exact determination of the others having the value it otherwise would. We can make only about five graduations in quality which would be differences of five points except at the top of the scale where it is 2 and an error in one gradation would make a difference of 5 points generally. When it is seen how close some of the nuts run, particularly the hickories, where the differences in total points awarded are generally only 1 point, with several of the same score, this crudeness of determination of one of the most ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... gleam. It was not by any means dull, however, either in colour or substance, and was of infinite hardness and fineness of texture. The surface was almost that of a jewel. The colour grew lighter as it rose, with gradation so fine as to be imperceptible, changing to a fine yellow almost of the colour of "mandarin" china. It was quite unlike anything I had ever seen, and did not resemble any stone or gem that I knew. I took it to be some unique mother-stone, ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... long and superb chain of the Pyrenees which forms the embattled isthmus of the peninsula, in the centre of those blue pyramids, covered in gradation with snow, forests, and downs, there opens a narrow defile, a path cut in the dried-up bed of a perpendicular torrent; it circulates among rocks, glides under bridges of frozen snow, twines along the edges of inundated precipices to scale the adjacent mountains of Urdoz and Oleron, and at last ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... arranges itself in a regular order: the largest fragments are on or nearest the head; the smaller are farther away, diminishing in regular gradation, until the farthest extremity, the tail, consists of sand, dust, and gases. There is a continual movement of the particles of the tail, operated upon by the attraction and repulsion of the sun. The fragments collide and crash against each other; by a natural law each stone places itself so that its ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... gradation of vowels both in stem and suffix, which was chiefly caused by the primitive Indo-Germanic system of accentuation. See the Author's ...
— A Middle High German Primer - Third Edition • Joseph Wright

... adjacent parts seemed to hail the morn with more than their wonted energy. Never, save on a hunting morning, did Mr. Jorrocks tumble about in bed with such restless anxiety as cock after cock took up the crow in every gradation of noise from the shrill note of the free street-scouring chanticleer before the door, to the faint response of the cooped and prisoned victims of the neighbouring poulterer's, their efforts ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees

... out this suggestion. Creation is "emanation"—the overflow of God's excess of goodness. But one does not readily understand how goodness, desiring all things to be like itself, should thereupon create evil—even to make it good. The Aristotelian philosophy, with its conception of the gradation of substances, would seem to be better equipped to meet the difficulty. A development requires stages; and every finite thing may thus be perfect in its way and perfect in its place, while in the absolute truth or God there is realized the meaning of ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... and tighter, and thus, causing it to vibrate more speedily, heightens the pitch. Imagine such a player to move his fingers slowly along the string, shortening it gradually as he draws his bow, the note would rise in pitch by a regular gradation; there would be no gap intervening between note and note. Here we have the analogue to the continuous spectrum, whose colours insensibly blend together without gap or interruption, from the red of the lowest pitch to the violet ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... placed her enthusiastic eye to the window of the box. The Devil preluded with a few proverbs and wise saws, and unfolded to her view scenes of love, in which he led her fancy so adroitly from the spiritual to the carnal, that she was scarcely aware of the gradation. If she were about to turn away her eyes with shame, the offensive object changed itself at once into a sublime image, which again attracted her attention. Her cheeks glowed, and she believed herself gazing upon an unknown and enchanted world. The artful Devil caused ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger

... idea, therefore, was never fairly tested. An organisation of several thousands in a city of penitence; under a discipline, which, while excluding the worst temptations of regular society, might preserve many of its elementary forms; managed by permanent officers, in number and gradation, sufficient to form and preserve the tone of a profession—is unfortunately still a speculation: nor is it yet safe to assume, that the failure of stations, exhibiting several features of the Commissioner's scheme, ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West

... post, which was kindly and delicately offered as a means of employment and support to himself and of pecuniary relief to his parents, as a stepping-stone to fortune; while the romance with which his disposition was tinged, served to picture to his prophetic vision, scenes of official gradation and pre-eminence. How often do young men of similar temperament indulge in the same enticing speculations, and allow themselves to be carried away by the blissful creations of a fertile fancy; alas! only to awake from the intoxication of their delightful dream, to realize the pangs of a bitter disappointment, ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... purpose. On the contrary, then, a man should, at the first approaches, favour their grief and express some approbation of their sorrow. By this intelligence you obtain credit to proceed further, and by a facile and insensible gradation fall into discourses more solid and proper for their cure. I, whose aim it was principally to gull the company who had their eyes fixed upon me, took it into my head only to palliate the disease. And indeed I have found by experience that I have an unlucky hand in persuading. My arguments ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... condemned tragedy was ever sold. And yet this critical analysis was such an admirable and demonstrative criticism, that the author assures us that it proved the absolute impossibility, "and the most absolute too," that his piece could not suffer the slightest curtailment. It demonstrated more—that the gradation and the development of interest required necessarily seven acts! but, from dread of carrying this innovation too far, the author omitted one act, which passed behind the scenes![170] but which ought to have come in between the fifth and sixth! Another point is proved, that the ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli

... this mighty element, assuming various attitudes toward the solitary voyager. Three of them, showing themselves as hostile (Neptune), as helpful (Ino Leucothea), as saving (the River-God); all three too seem in a kind of gradation, from the vast total sea, through one of its phases, to the small stream pouring into the sea from the land. Thus the Greek imagination, playing with water, deified the various appearances thereof, specially in their relation to man. The introduction ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... extraordinary application; then his ascent was so quicke, that it seemed rather a flight, then a growth, and he was such a darlinge of fortune, that he was at the topp, before he was seene at the bottome, for the gradation of his titles, was the effecte, not cause of his first promotion, and as if he had bene borne a favorite, he was supreme the first moneth he came to courte, and it was wante of confidence, not of creditt, that he had not all at first, which he obtayned afterwards, ...
— Characters from 17th Century Histories and Chronicles • Various

... Developed by Prayer and Fasting.—The Savior's statement concerning the evil spirit that the apostles were unable to subdue—"Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting"—indicates gradation in the malignity and evil power of demons, and gradation also in the results of varying degrees of faith. The apostles who failed on the occasion referred to had been able to cast out demons at other times. Fasting, when practised in prudence, and ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage

... any, was it a matter of any moment whether we went to Davy's Locker with or without breeches; but when the danger was passed, the joke began to appear, and I was amusing a large company with the tale when his lordship came in. The titter of the ladies increased to a giggle, and then, by regular gradation, to a loud and uncontrollable laugh. He very soon discovered that he was the subject, and I the cause, and for a minute or two seemed sulky; but it soon went off, and I cannot think this was the reason of his change of sentiments; for, although it is high treason in ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat

... white, and just a little hard inside, compared with Luxury's soft palm; a face honest, fair, and rather large than small; not beautiful, but exceedingly comely; a complexion not pink and white, but that delicately blended brickdusty color, which tints the whole cheek in fine gradation, outlasts other complexions twenty years, and beautifies the true Northern, even in old age. Gray, limpid, honest, point-blank, searching eyes; hair true nut-brown, without a shade of red or black; and a high, smooth forehead, ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade

... of the soul. It is the exhileration of the palace; it is the joy of the humblest home; it sparkles and glows in the banquet hall; it is the inspiration of the church. Music inspires every gradation of humanity, from the orangoutang and the cane-sucking dude with the single ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor

... brilliancy of cadmium orange cannot be disputed, nor its claim to be the only unexceptionable bright orange known. It even assists the formation of the other colour: remarks the author mentioned, "Brilliancy is obtained by gradation. Suppose a scarlet over-curling leaf, for example. The whole should be painted in pure orange, with the gentlest possible after-touch of vermilion towards the corner under the curl. When dry, a firm line—not wash—of ...
— Field's Chromatography - or Treatise on Colours and Pigments as Used by Artists • George Field

... a very beautiful Gradation of Thoughts to shew how amiable Virtue is. We love a virtuous Man, says he, who lives in the remotest Parts of the Earth, though we are altogether out of the Reach of his Virtue, and can receive from it no Manner ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... Consequently the composer felt that he had done his duty if, even in situations of the most tragic import, he provided his executant with a broad, even melody. Into this the consummate art of the singer could infuse every gradation of feeling. The composer presented a blank canvas, upon which the artist painted ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... analogy for the introduction of a federal system of "Home Rule all round" if such a scheme had been honestly contemplated. The first thing to keep in mind is that the internal constitution of the Dominions presents a whole gradation of constitutional types. There is the loose federal system of Australia, in which the Commonwealth powers are strictly limited and defined, and all residuary powers left to the States. There is the close confederation of Canada ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various

... may thus be considered as possessing a gradation of machines for the production of corn and raw materials, including in this gradation not only all the various qualities of poor land, of which every large territory has generally an abundance, but the inferior machinery which may be said to be employed when good land is further and further forced ...
— Nature and Progress of Rent • Thomas Malthus

... babies, and, like babies, sucking enormous sticks of barley-sugar. Actors and audience enter warmly into the illusion of the piece; and so especially are the former affected, that at Franconi's, where the battles of the Empire are represented, there is as regular gradation in the ranks of the mimic army as in the real imperial legions. After a man has served, with credit, for a certain number of years in the line, he is promoted to be an officer—an acting officer. If he conducts himself well, he may rise to be a Colonel or a General of Division; if ill, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... complain; only let me state the truth—some of the truth, at least,—and see hereafter if any darker truths will blot these pages. We have now been full two years united; the 'romance' of our attachment must be worn away. Surely I have now got down to the lowest gradation in Arthur's affection, and discovered all the evils of his nature: if there be any further change, it must be for the better, as we become still more accustomed to each other; surely we shall find no lower depth than this. And, if so, I can bear it well—as well, at least, as I have borne ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... from one tank to the other, mentally established the gradation of the fauna from the primitive protoplast ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... gradation of style is observable, it is natural to conclude, that these architectural varieties, emanating from one prototype, each clearly to be discriminated, yet dying into another by imperceptible shades, were successively developed at certain ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman

... Moreover, it was a trap which he had not only entered voluntarily, but which he had set himself; he had played into the Prince's hands, and was frantic to see his adversary tranquilly winning the game. It was almost melancholy to observe the gradation of his tone from haughty indignation to dismal concession. In an elaborate letter which he addressed "to the particular states, bishops, councillors, and cities of the Netherlands," he protested as to the innocence of his intentions, and complained ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... India or not, capable of being appointed to seats in the respective councils; empowered the governors of presidencies to nominate temporary successors to members of council who might die or vacate their office; altered a clause in the former bill, which compelled the company's servants to rise by gradation; repealed another, which required from them a disclosure of their property, on oath; and made several changes in the court of judicature and mode of trial for crimes and misdemeanors in India. This bill was ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... of metempsychosis is founded on the consciousness of gradation between beasts and men. The belief in a soul-endowed animal world was present among the ancients, and the laws of intelligence and instinct were misconstrued, or were regarded as a puzzle, which ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould

... illuminative and unitive stages had therefore been confused, and had come upon him simultaneously, though gradually; and this as was to be expected, had resulted in intense suffering. There was for him no gradation by which he passed slowly upwards from detachment to union. Richard Raynal's words to him had coincided with the struggling emergence of his own soul on to the higher plane; and he had opened his spiritual eyes on to a terrible future for which he had had but little preparation. The result had ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson

... over the right shoulder, casting one side of the face in shadow. The modulations of light on the chin and neck, and the gradation in the shadow cast by the book on the hand, show Correggio's mastery ...
— Correggio - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... artist cannot see the effect of what he is doing, is to me most miraculous; the material used is woollen and silken threads, so woven together, that a perfectly smooth surface is produced, having all the softness and gradation of tints to be found in the finest oil painting, without that glare which varnish produces; the execution of these works is attended by a most tedious application, requiring sometimes six years to complete one piece, ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... through its various stages; the brief span of human life has not been long enough to do so. The reason why we believe the oak-tree to have passed through all these stages is, because we are familiar with oak-trees of every gradation in size, from the seedling up to the noble veteran. Having seen this gradation in a vast multitude of trees, we are convinced that each individual ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball

... enormities in publike view, and tels them their faults on the stage, not as being sorry for them, but rather wishes still hee might finde more occasions to worke on. He is the generall corrupter of spirits, yet vntainted, inducing them by gradation to much lasciuious deprauity. He is a perspicuity of vanity in variety, and suggests youth to perpetrate such vices, as otherwise they had haply nere heard of. He is (for the most part) a notable hypocrite, seeming what he is not, and ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... hybridization which are exhibited by many species when crossed with other species. On the other hand, not only is it not proved that all species give rise to hybrids infertile inter se, but there is much reason to believe that, in crossing, species exhibit every gradation from perfect sterility to ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... there waiting in the darkness, ignorant of what was going to happen. He felt her hand clasping his. Without perceiving any gradation, he lost all consciousness of his body; he was no longer able to feel his limbs or internal organs. His mind remained active and alert. Nothing particular ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... freshness of the evening air. He found himself on a hill above Elterwater, looking back on the lake, and on a wide range of hills beyond, clothed, in all their lower slopes, with the full leaf of June. Wood rose above wood, in every gradation of tone and loveliness, creeping upwards through blue haze, till they suddenly lost hold on the bare peaks, which rose, augustly clear, into the upper sky. The lake with its deep or glowing reflexions—its smiling shore—the smoke of its few houses—lay below him; and between him and ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... or 48deg, the ordinary lowest extreme of January, to 82deg, the ordinary, or 86deg, the highest known extreme of July, near the level of the sea. Between these two points (both taken in the shade) there is from month to month a pretty regular gradation of increase or decrease, amounting to somewhat less than four degrees. In winter the prevailing winds are from the north-west, west and south; in summer the most frequent are the north, north-east and east. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various

... it would be," said my wife, smiling, notwithstanding her fears, "for now I remember that old Mr. Scott told me that his grandmother died before she was sixty, but that his mother lived to be seventy-five. Now, he is eighty, if he is a day, so there would be a regular gradation of ages in the family, only it would run backward instead of in the usual way. But, thinking it over, I don't believe the spiritualists will permanently bring up any more of that family. If they did, they would have ...
— Amos Kilbright; His Adscititious Experiences • Frank R. Stockton

... placed as a piece of furniture of ceremony upon a side-table, and was called a gantiere. The first woman presented to her in this manner all that she asked for, unless the tirewoman, the lady of honour, or a princess were present, and then the gradation pointed out in the instance of the glass of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... known by not effervescing when a drop of nitric, sulphuric or other acid is applied to them, or by the grains not being readily scratched or broken by ordinary pressure. In nature there is every intermediate gradation, from perfectly loose sand to the hardest sandstone. In MICACEOUS SANDSTONES mica is very abundant; and the thin silvery plates into which that mineral divides are often arranged in layers parallel to the planes of stratification, giving ...
— The Student's Elements of Geology • Sir Charles Lyell

... streams, that clothed them in fertility and beauty. Terraces were raised upon the steep sides of the Cordillera; and, as the different elevations had the effect of difference of latitude, they exhibited in regular gradation every variety of vegetable form, from the stimulated growth of the tropics, to the temperate products of a northern clime; while flocks of llamas—the Peruvian sheep—wandered with their shepherds over the broad, snow-covered wastes on the crests ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... see, there is among the Russian Nonconformist sects what may be called a gradation of fanaticism, in which is reflected the history of the Great Schism. In the Wanderers we have the representatives of those who adopted and preserved the Antichrist doctrine in its extreme form—the successors of those who fled to the forests to escape from the rage of the Beast and to await ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... simplicity of her tropical home had not been one of easy gradation, but a precipitate plunge. The convulsion which ensued from the culmination of events long gathering about little Simiti had hurled her through the forest, down the scalding river, and out upon the tossing ocean with such swiftness that, as she ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... the corner over the table, casting a patch of red light on the ikon of St. George the Victorious. From the ikon stretched on each side of the corner a row of cheap oleographs, which maintained a strict and careful gradation in the transition from the sacred to the profane. In the dim light of the candle end and the red ikon lamp the pictures looked like one continuous stripe, covered with blurs of black. When the tiled stove, trying to sing in unison with the weather, drew in the air with ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... place foolery, their hearts had been burning with jealousy of each other. Neither men nor women were satisfied with their parts. I had three male and two female characters of great importance in the play, but rising in gradation. Of the first of these all the actors were ambitious; and one of them who knew his own consequence, and that the manager could not carry on the business of the theatre at that time without him, ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft

... return again with twofold energy and renew more frequently the vividness of the first impression. Against the exhaustion and languor that result from habit, the most effectual remedy is to propose new objects to the senses; this variety retempers them, and the gradation of impressions calls forth the innate faculty, and makes it employ a proportionately stronger resistance. This faculty ought to be incessantly occupied in maintaining its independence against the attacks of the senses, but it must not triumph before the end, still less must it ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... came from, the governor-general of New Russia, Count Stroganov. In the world of Russian officialdom professing the dogma of "gradation" and "caution" in the question of Jewish rights he was the only one who had the courage to raise his voice on behalf of complete Jewish emancipation. ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... part be still a great deal lighter than black, or than other things about it, assume a given shade, as dark as, with due reference to other things, you can have it, but no darker. Mark that for your extreme dark on the object, and between those limits get as much drawing as you can, by subtlety of gradation. That will tax your powers of drawing indeed; and you will find this, which seems a childish and simple way of going to work, requires verily a thousandfold more power to carry out than all the pseudo-scientific ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... separate scenes, with no gradation or transition between them. It still bears traces of the lyrical origins of epic. But the narrative, though broken, is neither stinted nor laboured; it does not, like Beowulf, give the impression that it has been expanded beyond the convenient limits, and that the author is ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker

... white and yellow flowers, like a broidery of pearls and gold. The whole scene was bathed in the exquisite light, and rich with the delicate perfumes of a glorious evening, which filled the sky over his head with every perfect gradation of rose and amber and amethyst, and breathed over the quiet landscape a sensation of unbroken peace. But peace did not remain long in Eric's heart; each well-remembered landmark filled his soul with recollections of the days when he had returned from school, ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar

... individuals, pass through the usual form of youth, manhood, old age, and decay. Religion, like nations and individuals, passes through the regular gradation, first of infancy, when religious ideas and thoughts are crude in the extreme; the age of Puritanism, when innocent women and children are burned at the stake for witchcraft, when with gloomy faces and in unsightly ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt

... seems to explain. As far as I understand your remarks and illustrations, you doubt the possibility of gradations of intellectual powers. Now, it seems to me, looking to existing animals alone, that we have a very fine gradation in the intellectual powers of the Vertebrata, with one rather wide gap (not half so wide as in many cases of corporeal structure), between say a Hottentot and a Ourang, even if civilised as much mentally as the ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... this juncture, very imprudently, and without consideration, I threw out from the car three five-pound pieces of ballast. The accelerated rate of ascent thus obtained, carried me too rapidly, and without sufficient gradation, into a highly rarefied stratum of the atmosphere, and the result had nearly proved fatal to my expedition and to myself. I was suddenly seized with a spasm which lasted for more than five minutes, and even when this, in a measure, ceased, I could catch my breath only at long ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... proceeding from the sun, but they were shorter than on the evening of the 3d. These are caused by the tops of the great cumuli of the storm, when sunk below the horizon, intercepting the sun's rays, which still shine on the upper atmosphere. The gradation was very marked, and accorded with the different distances of the central vortex on the 3d and 4th—although, on the 4th, the nearest distance must have been over four hundred miles to the southern ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett

... stated or supposed to be. The public gets only a portion of the picture, and from an enormous group of cases, a few contrasted ones are picked out for the sake of the dramatic effect. The limelight of public notice is upon them and the softer lights and shadows are omitted. The public does not see the gradation. On the one hand we see the rich woman, the millionaire art dealer, the financial pirate being leniently dealt with, on the other hand we see the little milliner, the Italian fruit vender, and the ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells

... variety of needs in practical manipulation very satisfactorily. Changes in adjustment are easily and quickly made, in regard to intensity, interval and absolute rate. If desired, the gradation of intensities here employed may be refined to the threshold of ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... ravines, and the hunger of the north wind bites their peaks into barrenness; and, at last, the wall of ice, durable like iron, sets, death-like, its white teeth against us out of the polar twilight. And, having once traversed in thought this gradation of the zoned iris of the earth in all its material vastness, let us go down nearer to it, and watch the parallel change in the belt of animal life: the multitudes of swift and brilliant creatures that glance in the ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... by this change of scenes the passions are interrupted in their progression, and that the principal event, being not advanced by a due gradation of preparatory incidents, wants at last the power to move, which constitutes the perfection of dramatick poetry. This reasoning is so specious, that it is received as true even by those who in daily experience feel it to be false. The ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... and right gradation, the text has been prepared to suit the different ages of readers. Care has been given to the illustration, print, and binding of the series, for it is believed that this is the best way to secure from the children that careful handling of the volumes ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne

... half-way, sharp and black, as in those out-o'-door closets imagined and painted by Mr. Turner, whose Nature (Mr. Turner's) comes to a full stop as soon as Mr. Turner sees no further occasion for her, instead of melting by fine expanse and exquisite gradation into genuine distance, as Nature does in Claude and in Nature. To reverse the picture: standing at the door, you looked across forty feet of black, and the little corner seemed on fire, and the fair heads about the candle shone like the heads of St. Cecilias and Madonnas in an antique ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... high spirits, he had burst through the invariable monotony of his articulation. Without the slightest gradation of sound, his voice broke suddenly into a screech, prolonged in its own discord until it became perfectly unendurable to hear. The effect that he had produced upon us was not lost on him. His head sank on his breast; horrid shudderings shook ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins

... provinces, and his proclamations from Polotsk to his army, to Moscow, to his great nation, it was admitted that they were singularly adapted to persons and places. It appears, in fact, that in the political means which he employed there was a very striking gradation of energy. ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... bodily strength had been rapidly declining during the last few days, and it was only at intervals that he retained any degree of apparent consciousness. The last transition took place quietly and with almost imperceptible gradation. ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... woman mutually make each other happy-by sympathy, by admiration, by the atmosphere they bear about them-down to the mere impersonal pleasure of passing happy faces in the street. For, through all this gradation, the difference of sex makes itself pleasurably felt. Down to the most lukewarm courtesies of life, there is a special chivalry due and a special pleasure received, when the two sexes are brought ever so lightly into contact. We love our ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... in the military councils, and his office was very lucrative. To his charge was intrusted the eagle of the legion. [Footnote: Liv. xxv. 5; Caes. B.C., vi. 6.] As the centurion could rise from the ranks, and rose by regular gradation through the different maniples of the Hastati, Principes, and Triarii, there was great inducement held out to the soldiers. In the Roman legion it would seem that there was a regular gradation of rank although there were but few distinct offices. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... in the different forms of diet as enumerated herein is to be found in the mechanical gradation of the substances in accordance with the progressive ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... vegetable life is, that every change shall be gradual; that no new creature shall be formed widely different from anything before existing; that in this, as in everything else in nature, there shall be gradation and harmony—then these rudimentary organs are necessary and are an essential part of the system of nature. Ere the higher vertebrates were formed, for instance, many steps were required, and many ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... like a rich and beautiful oasis. They had at first been struck by the sudden view of so many magnificent palaces, but they now perceived that they were intermingled with mean cottages: a circumstance which indicated the want of gradation among the classes, and that luxury had not been generated there, as in other countries, by industry, but had preceded it; whereas, in the natural order, it ought to be more or less ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote

... proceed to chop off those of other people. If I think it right to steal Mr. Dilly's plate, I am a bad man; but he can say nothing to me. If I make an open declaration that I think so, he will keep me out of his house. If I put forth my hand, I shall be sent to Newgate. This is the gradation of thinking, preaching, and acting: if a man thinks erroneously, he may keep his thoughts to himself, and nobody will trouble him; if he preaches erroneous doctrine, society may expel him; if he ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... have, for the most part, been selected from the works of Octave Feuillet, . Laboulaye, Hgsippe Moreau, Flix Gras, and other well known writers. The text is easy and progressive, proceeding from the very simple to the more difficult by a regular gradation. Following the reading material, and based on it, are short English exercises to be translated into French, ...
— Contes et lgendes - 1re Partie • H. A. Guerber

... chivalry and courtesy. Their education was severely moral, and pursued with great strictness in respect to useful exercises, and what were deemed elegant accomplishments. From being pages, they were advanced to the next gradation of squires; from squires, these candidates for the honours of knighthood were ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, ...
— The Communist Manifesto • Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

... musicians) that, with the help of the Omdeh, be became familiar with the remarkable peculiarity in the Arab system of music—its division of tones into thirds. Egyptian musicians consider that the European system of music is deficient in sounds. This small and delicate gradation of sound gives a peculiar softness to the performance of good ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... whose solemnity prefaced millions of common place epitaphs before Tennyson taught grief to speak, lamenting his dead friend in every phase and variety of regret. With such gradation and difference of sorrow will the recent death of a very remarkable woman, Lucie, Lady Duff Gordon, be mourned for by all who knew her, and with such a sense of blank loss will they long continue to lament one whose public success as an author was only commensurate with the ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon

... Montpellier-le-Vieux is best appreciated as we walk back to the farm, the mind not then being full of expectancy. What a superb coup d'oeil! Distance upon distance, one mountain range rising above another, almost in endless succession, the various stages showing infinite gradation of colour—subtle, distracting, absolutely unpaintable! No wonder the air is unspeakably fresh and exhilarating, seeing that it blows north, south, east and west from lofty Alps. We have in view the sombre walls ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... about Oriental etiquette not to introduce the matter on which he had come at the outset of the conversation. He passed and received the necessary compliments first, endured a discussion of local trade prospects, and then by an easy gradation led up to the powers of the local Kady. He did not speak Arabic himself, and Rad el Moussa had no English. But they had both served a life apprenticeship to sea trading, and the curse of the Tower of Babel had very little power over them. In the memories ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... of his first volume he states "that we can descend by almost imperceptible degrees from the most perfect creature to the most formless matter—from the most highly organized animal to the most entirely inorganic substance. We will recognize this gradation as the great work of nature; and we will observe it not only as regards size and form, but also in respect of movements and in the successive generations ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard

... powers, that this should be the Charge confided to his management. For, not only was it the strongest, and susceptible of the highest charge of coloring, but it had also the advantage of grouping together all the principal delinquents of the trial, and affording a gradation of hue, from the showy and prominent enormities of the Governor-General and Sir Elijah Impey in the front of the picture, to the subordinate and half-tint iniquity of the Middletons and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore

... considerations urged in favor of the measure referred to are that in almost all the land districts, and particularly in those in which the lands have been long surveyed and exposed to sale, there are still remaining numerous and large tracts of every gradation of value, from the Government price downward; that these lands will not be purchased at the Government price so long as better can be conveniently obtained for the same amount; that there are large tracts which even the improvements of the adjacent lands will never ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren

... Epilepsy shows every gradation, from symptoms which cannot be described in language, to severe grand mal. Gowers says: "The elements of an epileptic attack may be extended, and thereby be made less intense, though not less distressing. If we conceive a minor attack ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs

... to them out of the fog—seemingly from a great distance— the sound of a laugh, a low, deliberate, soulless laugh, which had no more of joy than that of a hyena night-prowling in the desert; a laugh that rose by slow gradation, louder and louder, clearer, more distinct and terrible, until it seemed barely outside the narrow circle of their vision; a laugh so unnatural, so unhuman, so devilish, that it filled those hardy man-hunters with ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... therefore, that the damper pedal—popularly but erroneously called the "loud pedal"—has nothing to do with "noise" as such. Its purpose is to amplify and color the waves of sound and these waves may vary all the way from pp to ff. The dynamic gradation of pianoforte tone is caused by the amount of force with which the hammer strikes the wires; and this power is applied by the attack and pressure of the fingers. The damper pedal will, to be sure, reinforce fortissimo effects, but logically it is only a means of reinforcement and should never ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... creeping of the blood." I know that Westminster, though remarkable for its chapel, was, by no means, a first-rate specimen of its own style of architecture; and, at that moment, a journey through Europe promised to be a gradation of enjoyments, each more exquisite than the other. All the architecture of America united, would not assemble a tithe of the grandeur, the fanciful, or of the beautiful, (a few imitations of Grecian temples excepted,) ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... breathe with her breath for hours together; feel every little warming of the colour on her cheek marking its own changes on the temperature of yours; follow every slight fluttering of her bosom, every faint gradation of her sighs, as if her heart was beating, her life glowing, within yours. Surely it is then—if ever—that we realize, almost revive, in ourselves, the love of the first two of our race, when angels walked with them on the same garden paths, and ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... who, like mountain flowers, mark with most characteristic precision the gradation of social zones. The hierarchy of classes is plainly visible among them; it is blurred in the other sex. With women this hierarchy has the average regularity of nature; among men we see it broken by the incalculable varieties of human freedom. The reason is that the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... hind-part of the cow, from a point near the gambrel-joint up to the tail, Guenon calls the escutcheon. The following cuts show the marks of all of Guenon's eight classes, the first and the last in each class. The intermediate ones are in regular gradation from the first to the eighth order. Each class is divided into high, medium, and low, yielding milk somewhat in proportion to their size. We give the quantity of milk which the large cows will yield. This also supposes cows to be well fed on suitable food. Smaller ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden

... The gradation both in thought and in words has been carefully maintained, and the work provided enables the pupils to advance by easy and evenly progressive stages from the beginning to ...
— The New McGuffey First Reader

... infinite force. This pressure must result in mechanical strain somewhere, both in their own substance, and in that of the rocks surrounding them; and we can form no conception of the result of irresistible pressure, applied so as to rend and raise, with imperceptible slowness of gradation, masses thousands of feet in thickness. We want some experiments tried on masses of iron and stone; and we can't get them tried, because Christian creatures never will seriously and sufficiently spend money, except to find out the shortest ways of killing each other. But, besides ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin

... his hand owned the weight of years,[16] but the conception of the subject is still animated and striking, the colours still glowing; while, Titian-like, the light still flows around the mighty group in every gradation of tone. ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler

... and, selecting a few things of each kind, he told Chia Jung to have them taken to the Jung mansion. After this, he himself kept what was required for his own use at home; and then allotting the rest, with due compliance to gradation, he had share after share piled up at the foot of the moon-shaped platform, and sending servants to summon the young men of the clan, he distributed ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... we possess the power to struggle, hope is the last feeling to desert the human mind. Men are endowed with every gradation of courage, from the calm energy of reflection, which is rendered still more effective by physical firmness, to the headlong precipitation of reckless spirit: from the resolution that grows more imposing and more respectable as there is greater occasion for its exercise, to the fearful ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... through it all. I have been a bad boy, Mr. Cassilis; I do not seek to deny that; but it was after my wife's death, and you know, with a widower, it's a different thing: sinful - I won't say no; but there is a gradation, we shall hope. And talking of that - Hark!" he broke out suddenly, his hand raised, his fingers spread, his face racked with interest and terror. "Only the rain, bless God!" he added, after a pause, ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of the next lowest sub-kingdom, the articulata. Afterwards come land animals, of which the first are reptiles, universally allowed to be the type next in advance from fishes, and to be connected with these by the links of an insensible gradation. From reptiles we advance to birds, and thence to mammalia, which are commenced by marsupialia, acknowledgedly low forms in their class. That there is thus a progress of some kind, the most superficial glance at the geological ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... generally obeyed, in some ages and countries than in others; and, like them, are susceptible of great variety in their application, from the character and usages of nations. I shall consider these principles in the gradation of those which are necessary to any tolerable intercourse between nations; those which are essential to all well-regulated and mutually advantageous intercourse; and those which are highly conducive to the preservation of a mild and friendly intercourse between civilised states. Of the first ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh

... ere it fall! If truth, if virtue, to your hearts be dear; If sounds of sweet content you love to hear; If generous sons, and daughters chaste, you prize, And all a happy home's delightful ties; If just gradation on the social scale Be worth your care; if rank can aught avail: If rev'rence for the altar and the throne, Be yours, and GEORGE the lawful king, you own: If rights your fathers were combin'd to save, When Britain's sceptre ...
— The Ghost of Chatham; A Vision - Dedicated to the House of Peers • Anonymous

... attention to the probability of all change in the organic, as well as in the inorganic world, being the result of law, and not of miraculous interposition. He saw the difficulty of distinguishing between species and varieties, the almost perfect gradation of form in some groups, and the great similarity of domestic breeds of animals to such species. He believed that some degree of change was produced by the physical conditions of life, the intercrossing of species, and by habits causing increased use or disuse of parts. ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... suit him, and he demolished it. He said, "Mandeville puts the case of a man who gets drunk at an alehouse, and says it is a public benefit, because so much money is got by it to the public. But it must be considered that all the good gained by this through the gradation of alehouse-keeper, brewer, maltster, and farmer, is overbalanced by the evil caused to the man and his family ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith

... Utopias—save for the breeding schemes of Plato and Campanella—ignored that reproductive competition among individualities which is the substance of life, and dealt essentially with its incidentals. The endless variety of men, their endless gradation of quality, over which the hand of selection plays, and to which we owe the unmanageable complication of real life, is tacitly set aside. The real world is a vast disorder of accidents and incalculable forces in which men ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... holding it. The possession of economic comfort has never yet guaranteed a decent life, much less a spiritually satisfactory one. The morals of Fifth Avenue are not such that it can look down on Third Avenue, nor is it possible anywhere to discern gradation of character on the basis of relative economic standing. It is undoubtedly true that folks and families often have their moral stamina weakened and their personalities debauched by sinking into discouraging poverty, but it is an open question whether more folks and families have not lost their ...
— Christianity and Progress • Harry Emerson Fosdick

... understand that she had expected some other kind of painful communication—doubtless about the divorce Lord Loudwater had threatened. But he had composed a series of phrases leading up by a nice gradation to the final announcement, and he went on: "Yes. There is very little likelihood ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson

... ordained to serve; that liberty is dangerous to the many; that servitude, the most rigorous, is a blessing; that it accords with the creative intent of God, and with his revealed institutions; that a nation cannot be homogeneous, and should not aim at it; that there is a law and scale of gradation, on which the top is privilege and authority, the bottom labor and obedience. These are the radical theories of the respective sections of the land. Men often are profoundly ignorant of the principles which control their policy, as a ship is unconscious of the ...
— Conflict of Northern and Southern Theories of Man and Society - Great Speech, Delivered in New York City • Henry Ward Beecher

... wood carbonized to a certain degree, but retaining distinctly its woody texture. Dr. MacCulloch, On Rocks, p. 636., observes: "In its chemical properties, lignite holds a station intermediate between peat and coal; while among the varieties a gradation in this respect may be traced; the brown and more organised kinds approaching very near to peat, while the more compact kinds, such as jet, approximate ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various

... so constituted that we can look back at our past and see it as a gradation of steps, a sort of sequence, and can thus gain a kind of inkling of the nature of the next step against which we are ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley

... most solemn hour of day, when the division between light and darkness seems less a gradation than a sudden blur. A faint yellow line still lingered across the western horizon, and against it the belt of pines rose like an advancing army. The wind, which blew toward him from the woods, filled his nostrils with ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow



Words linked to "Gradation" :   gradational, rank, graduation, blending, gradate, step, grade, ablaut



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